I don’t care about cookies has long been one of the Chrome extensions we can’t live without. It’s a great tool that gets rid of all these pesky cookie banners that have cropped up since the dawn of the well-intended GDPR law. It makes browsing the web just a little less annoying. The extension has been doing its job well for years, and there is nothing much that needs improving. But now, it has been acquired by security company Avast, so there might be some changes coming to the product.

As spotted by gHacks, I don’t care about cookies developer Daniel has announced on the extension’s website that it has been acquired by Avast, 10 years after the inception of the project. The developer promises that the product will remain free to use and that he will keep working on it, and that donations are no longer necessary given the backing of the multi-million dollar company. He further writes that the company and him will “help each other in creating even better products,” so it’s possible that the technology behind I don’t care about cookies will soon be available in Avast products, too.

As good as the news is for the developer, its users might not love the fact that it was Avast to acquire the popular browser extension. Avast’s browser extensions have been found to collect user data in the past, sending browsing history and behavior to servers. This led Chrome and other browsers to remove the extensions from their web stores, though they returned later as no evidence of a breach of private data was found. Later, an investigation found that the free version of Avast Antivirus also collected user data that was sold for revenue via a subsidiary. These practices leave a sour taste, and we can only hope that something like this won’t happen to I don’t care about cookies.

If you’re wary about the future of I don’t care about cookies, one alternative could be Consent-O-Matic. The extension goes a step further as it doesn’t only try to remove cookie banners, but also select your preferred options regarding cookies whenever possible.